No they aren't. For the past 20 years, highways are funded by your general fund taxpayer dollars, because the taxes on gas and diesel are nowhere near sufficient for the amount of road construction and maintenance we have to do.
Hybrids and EVs are compounding the problem, but it's worth noting that the HTF was already massively in the hole by 2016, when "hybrid" meant "Toyota Prius" and "EV" meant either a Model S or a Nissan Leaf exclusively.
@Lib_Development Hmm what is the long term solution here? Privatizing the roads and tolls?
@Lib_Development crazy we sent an entire highway trustfund deficit to Ukraine
@Lib_Development the maintenance impact scales exponentially with vehicle weight, road wear is proportional to axle weight^4, so while EVs are a bit worse than conventional vehicles, we're basically all subsidizing road freight all the time would be nice to actually price this in
@Lib_Development I really think there was an alternative universe where Obama and Boner got the gas tax pegged to inflation because I want to say 2008 was the start of the curve
@Lib_Development There's a disproportionate discussion of how expensive transit construction is when the exact same cost disease is happening to highways.
@Lib_Development And of course local roads are pretty much entirely funded by property/sales taxes.
@Lib_Development it's typical of people to just expect roads to just appear and last forever, and expect to never pay a bent copper for the service
@Lib_Development Almost all (like 99%) usage-related road wear is caused by trucks.
@Lib_Development Having 20% - 30% each year go to stuff other than Highways is a big reason, too.
@Lib_Development We should stop the bailouts and see how broken peoples brains get
They should ditch fuel taxes for financing road infrastructure. Taxes on fuel can be used for funding projects that help remedy the burning of fossil fuels like parks, nature preservations, etc. and some projects to help with dealing with pollution like upgrade of HVAC systems with filters for all the public buildings (including schools, public transit,…). For roads we need something that is more akin to public transit financing: say 30% coming from general taxes, the rest comes from tolls and parking fees.
@Lib_Development Local roads are mostly out of taxes, the interstates are still *mostly* user pays but trending away from that, overall its about 50/50. x.com/Insect_Song/st…
@Lib_Development Local roads are mostly out of taxes, the interstates are still *mostly* user pays but trending away from that, overall its about 50/50. x.com/Insect_Song/st…
@Lib_Development If we just tolled *some* of the interstates beyond state borders this could be helped at least somewhat
@Lib_Development I asked Grok to add up all the road/car/driver taxes and fees of any type and compare it to total road spending. Grok may have gotten it wrong; if anyone wants to check the math I can post it or if you do your own estimate, I'd be interested in seeing it.
@Lib_Development The primary reason for this is that the Federal Gas Tax has not been increased for 32 years!!!
@Lib_Development OOPS, TURNS OUT ROADS *AREN'T* CHEAPER THAN RAIL
@Lib_Development more like the politicians siphon off most tax revenue to buy votes aka the billions of welfare corporate and otherise, leaving not enough for essential needs in many cases
@Lib_Development So let us know who pays for the highways if only trucks and buses allowed on them
@Lib_Development Road west and tear is almost entirely trucks
@Lib_Development Problem is raising the federal gas tax is politically awful and likely a regressive tax.
@Lib_Development Can’t wait to start doing this with social security
@Lib_Development So 20 years ago roads were fully paid by car taxes? What changed? Can we go back? I assumed that roads are always have to be subsidized, but apparently not.
@Lib_Development Yeah because ur unions have guys standing around doing nothing as we drive by, but collecting time and a half.
@Lib_Development It is worth pointing out that every contributor of those "general fund taxpayer dollars" is a user of roads and highways, and the same cannot be said of any other alternative use of public transportation dollars
@Lib_Development Annual $1K tax on EVs now! $50K tax per “housing unit” constructed outside city/town centers on less than 1 acre.
@Lib_Development They redo the roads (which are fine) in my dad's neighborhood ant once a year or so. I wonder if part of that cost is grift & unnecessary repairs to pad pockets
@Lib_Development Isn’t this true in every state except CA? Though I’m sure federal money probably makes comparison difficult